Evan Hall: Optus Stadium football key to attracting AFL tourists

Stadium provides tourism boost

The West Australian

VideoFooty and Perth’s Optus Stadium have been credited with one of the biggest jumps in interstate visitors to WA in recent years.

The increase in interstate leisure tourism numbers to WA is no accident. What has changed is that we are now getting large numbers of additional events at Optus Stadium for the first time, particularly for the AFL.

By the time of these latest tourism results, there had been 14 AFL fixtures at Optus Stadium drawing interstate fans to Perth. Tourism Council WA conservatively estimates those matches secured more than 20,000 additional visitors to WA and we confidently expect to have attracted more than 35,000 visitors by the end of the season.

Back in 2014, Tourism Council WA was advocating the economic value of the stadium and the importance of AFL tourism. Our economic research then showed 38,000 out-of-State AFL visitors across the entire AFL season (not including finals) would generate $117 million in economic output and create 550 full-time equivalent jobs.

At this rate, the economic return of AFL tourism to the State will cover the cost of the stadium in a little over 10 years.

The stadium is a genuine example of what can be achieved when government and industry work together on a well-developed strategy to drive tourism to WA. The then-State government made the right decisions to invest in the stadium and ensure it was designed to achieve clear objectives. The first objective was to give more West Australians a better experience at more events.

The second objective was to build an economic asset that would attract more out-of-State visitors, tourism dollars and jobs to WA.

We get twice the matches and twice the tourism as stadiums such as Metricon on the Gold Coast.

The success of AFL and event tourism at Optus Stadium has been a team effort. The stadium is a great design, truly a fans-first experience, well delivered by the government’s stadium project team. They didn’t go cheap and never lost sight of the objective to create great event experiences and event tourism jobs.

VenuesWest has also done a superb job governing Optus Stadium to maximise both event and tourism outcomes. Critically, they selected an outstanding stadium operator in VenuesLive, whose event expertise and commitment to tourism has driven interstate visitors to events such as the Ed Sheeran concert as well as AFL matches.

For every AFL match, 6000 seats are set aside for general admission and 1000 seats are set aside for tourism packages. The stadium’s extra seating capacity, and this open availability of tickets, has allowed tens of thousands of regional West Australians and interstate visitors to visit Perth and experience an AFL match here for the first time.

The tourism industry worked with Optus Stadium to develop affordable packages for interstate visitors.

Camera IconThe stadium became a sea of blue for Chelsea’s game against Perth Glory.Picture: Trevor Collens

These fans could access AFL tourism packages including return flights, four nights accommodation, match tickets and car hire from as little as $750 per person. These tourism packages are critical to changing the out-of-date perspective that Perth is expensive.

Of course, AFL tourism is driven by great footy and we are blessed with two great local teams drawing big crowds every week. We get twice the matches and twice the tourism as stadiums such as Metricon on the Gold Coast.

And to bring it all home, Tourism WA invested in an extremely effective marketing campaign targeting interstate AFL fans. If you are an AFL fan from Melbourne you can’t have missed it. Effective marketing of good value AFL tourism packages has paid off. When the final reports come in for the full season, Tourism Council WA expects 35,000-45,000 interstate visitors attended Perth matches across the 23 rounds and the finals.

Five new wickets have been installed at Optus Stadium ahead of the summer cricket season.

The West Australian

VideoFive new wickets have been installed at Optus Stadium ahead of the summer cricket season.

This is more visitors than WA receives from Germany, Japan or India. AFL tourism is like discovering a whole new country of people who want to visit Perth and is the single largest new tourism market WA has seen in a long time.

These outstanding tourism results are just from AFL matches. Optus Stadium’s 60,000-plus seats gives us the physical and economic capacity to host other major events that will draw international spectators and even more interstate crowds. Tourism WA has already secured rugby league State of Origin for next year. It is predicted to draw 20,000 visitors who will spend $15 million in WA, creating 60 full-time equivalent jobs.

Taking advantage of this venue is critical to bringing back interstate and international visitors. With industry and government working as a team, our stadium will grab people’s attention across the globe. Emphasis needs to be on investing in the power of events — they can and will create a compelling reason to come to WA.